


And Sparks Flew

by josephina_x



Series: Night and Flame: The Song Electric [1]
Category: Smallville, Smallville Season 11 (Comics)
Genre: (the h of h/c may possibly border on nightmare fuel if you think about it a little too much), Christmas, Gen, Hospitals, Hostage Situation, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 21:34:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's December 24, 2011, and Lex is celebrating his "first" Christmas Eve with a LexCorp party. It turns out to not be very festive at all, despite certain mandates he'd thought would bring at least a little cheer to the thing. Next year, he thinks he'll take a suggestion or two from Kent ...or maybe just stay at home, instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Sparks Flew

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jlvsclrk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jlvsclrk/gifts).



> Title: And Sparks Flew  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville, Smallville Season 11  
> Pairing: Clark, Lex  
> Rating: R (for swearing, mostly)  
> Spoilers: through Smallville (before the seven-year-jump) and through Season 11's "Guardian" arc  
> Word count: 6500+  
> Summary: It's December 24, 2011, and Lex is celebrating his "first" Christmas Eve with a LexCorp party. It turns out to not be very festive at all, despite certain mandates he'd thought would bring at least a little cheer to the thing. Next year, he thinks he'll take a suggestion or two from Kent ...or maybe just stay at home, instead.  
> Warnings: n/a  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: A gift for [jlvsclrk](http://jlvsclrk.livejournal.com) in the 2012 Clexmas Gift Exchange :) (Originally posted [here at clexmas](http://clexmas.livejournal.com/67665.html).)  
> Fic Prompt: "A meteor freak ruins the LuthorCorp party but gives Clex a second chance."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark swallowed a little hard and tugged at his tuxedo jacket a little with one hand. He wished he had something else to do, like helping out Santa Claus again, even with what that might mean -- the hopefully-not-so-drunk old man needing help at this time of year -- anyway.

Instead, he was stuck at the LexCorp gala, their Winter Ball, supposedly "reporting" on the festivities.

...except that he'd been explicitly "invited" to attend as the Daily Planet reporter assigned to the event. And, what with Lex having bought back the Planet while 'Clark' had by necessity been 'off' for several months and 'Superman' had been on 24-7 Satellite Watch due to that stupid -- well, no, technically really, really _diabolically_ **smart** \-- radioactive isotope Lex had tagged him with... Now that he'd finally found a way to rid himself of the stuff and even managed to do it, he was finally back on the job after weeks and weeks of 'sick leave'... and had found himself thrust into a whole new set of unfamiliar and seriously _brutal_ office politics, a la Luthor takeover ( _again_ ). Worse, Clark couldn't afford to say 'no' to any assignment he was handed from above: his job security was shaky enough as it was.

And so here he was.

_Why_ Lex wanted him around, Clark didn't really want to contemplate. _Don't send Lane_ was one thing, but when the directive from above was _send Kent_ , it said something else entirely -- and very specifically -- about _him_.

"Actually, I was curious," Clark heard from behind him, and he barely caught himself from jumping twelve feet or whirling around to face the owner of said voice and get Luthor away from his back. He managed to restrain the urge... barely. But that meant he went stock still and didn't even so much as twitch instead -- not really the best alternative -- and when the hell had Luthor become a mind-reader? Then Clark glanced down at himself without moving his head and briefly did a mental facepalm, because... stupid body-language.

"I hadn't seen you around in awhile," Lex continued, a little closer now, "and then I hear you skipped town. It's enough to make a body wonder if he was being avoided," Lex said, almost talking directly into Clark's ear.

Clark struggled with a response for a moment, before settling on: "Are you hiding behind me?"

There was a pause.

"...Hiding?" he heard noncommitally, and oh, yeah, that was _such_ a tell for Lex, missing memories or otherwise.

"You're staying behind my shoulders," Clark said, like it wasn't obvious how large he was -- it wasn't like he could really hide that sort of thing -- "and I'm practically a wallflower over here." And he was, in fact -- part of the reason why he'd been so surprised was because he-- _they_ were over by the pillars lining the edges of the great ballroom and the wall was only a few feet away. Clark still wasn't entirely sure how Lex had snuck up on him -- when exactly had he vanished from the group of high society socialites, let alone managed to make it out of the room without comment, doubled-around, and come back in by the nearby doorway behind him? ...Clark suddenly started rethinking how well having a door at his back under usual circumstances would work for a quick and speedy Superman exit in case of emergency elsewhere, versus the possibility that Lex would take advantage of such to sneak up on him from now on.

...He didn't really like the odds.

"A wallflower, hm?" he heard from Lex in what passed for a confused tone from him, and Clark sipped at his drink -- a water glass, very innocuous; he _was_ supposed to be working, after all -- and very carefully did not glance behind him or otherwise indicate in any way that Lex was there.

"Yup. Standing over by the wall, faded into the background like I'm part of the wallpaper," Clark put out there, then realized that Lex might not remember-- er, _know_ what wallpaper _was_ , since he probably hadn't encountered it in the seven months or so since losing his memory. There certainly wasn't any here -- that would be too low-class for the sort of banquet hall a Luthor could afford for his company's Metropolis festivities -- this place was all marble floors and high columns and solid oak paneling. "Just at the edges of the room, all dressed up fancy but just wilting away, ignored by everybody, never gonna be asked for a dance."

"...You want to dance?" Lex said behind him, and Clark had to do a mental double-take, because... what? Just, _what?_ Really? _That's what you got out of that, Lex?_

"Noooo," Clark said under his breath as he took another sip of water, and at a slight huff of breath behind him, he belatedly realized that Lex must have been _teasing_ him.

"Is that why you're over here, then?" Lex asked easily enough. "To avoid the askers?"

"No." Clark frowned down into his glass. "Why would anybody ask me to dance?" he muttered under his breath, confused.

There was a brief pause, before he heard Lex say, "Well, then, why are you over here?"

"I'm watching the crowd," Clark told him, trying not to frown, and resisting the urge to look back over his shoulder and stare. "I'm doing my job."

"You can't do that in the midst of things?"

Clark rolled his eyes; he couldn't help it. "Uh, no. I'm a reporter; reporters don't just 'mingle'. I'd stand out too much and no-one would talk to me, or around me." The party might be high-class enough that he'd been thoroughly frisked before entering and wasn't 'allowed' to wear his reporting badge as usual, but that didn't mean that a single soul in the room wasn't aware of the fact that he didn't belong to this class of people. "I'm not _you_ ," he added, with a 'duh' overtone he really couldn't suppress.

"I'm sure you could manage," he heard Lex say mildly. Then he added, "I'm certainly able to be a 'wallflower' myself."

Clark barely stopped himself from snorting. ...Well, loudly, at least. "You're not being a wallflower -- you're hiding from sight. You couldn't stand over here in plain sight and not be noticed."

"No?"

"Nuh-uh," Clark repeated. "People would _know_ you were watching them like a hawk if you weren't mingling. You blend by being over there in the middle of everything, because they think you can't keep track of everything going on. I blend in by staying at the outskirts, because they think I can't tell what's going on if I'm not in the middle of things listening to what they're saying," Clark ended matter-of-factly, because this was basic stuff -- _of course_ he knew this.

"Hm," Lex said. "Interesting..." and Clark suddenly realized that he'd really stepped in it now. He'd been trying to act intelligent -- or at least intelligent enough that he ought to keep his reporting job at the Planet -- but not _too_ intelligent. Not intelligent enough to cause trouble or be a threat and need firing... or more watching.

Oops.

...Aaaaand now he could just _hear_ Lex gearing up for a smirk behind him. Damn it.

Ugh. _Oh god, I wish something would happen to distract him. Just... something. **Anything** ,_ Clark thought desperately.

And then there was the tell-tale click of a gun cocking right at his back.

Clark froze.

Lex stilled behind him.

_What the hell is he--!?_

"Luthor."

Clark blinked.

And then he closed his eyes and mentally kicked himself. Several times. Because he really ought to be careful what he wished for.

"Summers," Clark murmured, and he heard Lex start behind him.

" _Kent_ ," Eric Summers hissed an acknowledgment tinged with a mixture of glee and hatred, and Clark could feel the Kryptonite in the bullets of the gun radiating their way down the open barrel from three feet away. He began to turn around slowly, but at Eric's spat out, "You keep facing forward!" he froze and turned back, thinking a mile a minute... or at least as fast as he could manage _this_ close to _that_ much unshielded Kryptonite.

"Summers?" Lex echoed, and Clark tamped down a surge of panic. Lex must not have read up on him yet, and Clark couldn't jump Eric when he was packing _that_ \-- he'd collapse more than stop Eric and get them both shot.

"Both of you, shut up and come back this way," Summers ordered. "And don't even think about trying anything."

"I will not," Lex protested, staying right where he was, but he did so quietly, and his voice didn't travel.

"You will," Eric said triumphantly.

"No, I don't think I will," Lex said.

"Oh, no, you will," Eric repeated with surety, and Clark could almost hear the crazy grin stretching across his face.

"No?" Lex said mildly. "Or you'll... what, shoot me?" he said incredulously.

"Oh, no," Eric agreed. "I won't shoot you."

"Lex--" Clark warned quietly, glancing around the room frantically, but -- true-to-reporter-form -- no-one was paying attention, the one time he could've really used it.

"No, I won't shoot you," Eric said genially. "I'll shoot _him_."

There was a pause.

Then...

"Go ahead," said Lex.

Clark felt his stomach drop out.

And then a gunshot sounded--

Oh god it _hurt_.

...Lex was staring down at him expressionlessly. He looked a little pale.

Which was weird, because Clark was pretty sure that _Lex_ hadn't gotten shot, but...

Something yanked at his shoulder and everything went grey.

~*~*~*~*~*~

_What..._ Lex's mind stuttered. _What what what._

That... hadn't happened.

That _could not possibly_ have happened.

...But Kent was lying on the ground, blood pooling around him from a gun shot wound to his back, and staring up at him, looking confused.

And maybe a little betrayed.

Well, Lex was feeling more than a little betrayed, too, because there was no way in fucking hell he would've said what he did if he hadn't been expecting the bullet to bounce like a dime on a properly turned-down bedsheet, leaving Summers agog and stammering.

If anything, _Lex_ was the one who ought to be feeling angry and betrayed here, because what the hell right did Kent have to be lying there, _bleeding_ , when Lex knew full well that he was--

\--not supposed to be bleeding, nor was he supposed to be sprawled across a floor of any kind after _collapsing_ , and he was _definitely_ not supposed to be getting dragged off half-unconscious by a madman with a gun while the rest of the LexCorp party guests were screaming their heads off in terror and scattering like frightened deer having suddenly and inexplicably come face-to-face with a feral beast.

Lex shook off the shock and lunged for this _Summers_ , and the gun.

Summers dug his fingers into his gunshot victim's shoulder, whipped the gun up, and put it to Kent's lolling head.

Lex came to a screeching halt.

Summers grinned up at him.

"Didn't think so," he said knowingly, with _amusement_ of all things, and Lex felt something in him turn to ice.

"You--" Lex began, but Summers cut him off, eyes dark and intense with an emotion Lex couldn't quite decipher.

"You help me move him," Summers said, "and I won't kill him."

"And if I don't?" Lex said quietly, amid the screams and cacophony of chaos echoing from behind them, not daring to look away.

"Then I kill him," Eric said.

...Lex grasped Clark under his other arm and helped drag him out the door he'd snuck in by earlier to surprise Kent. And, truth be told, he didn't appreciate the role-reversal in the slightest.

He told himself he was doing it because it got him closer to the gun, and he wanted to know what that material was that had pierced Kent's skin...

But he knew he was lying.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Kent was losing a lot of blood.

The good news was: that left a smeared yet really hard-to-miss trail of red across the marble floors for anyone that might think to follow them, so their chances of rescue were looking up.

The bad news was: _Kent was losing a lot of blood_ , and if the deathly grey-white-pale tone his skin was taking on was any indication, he wasn't going to _survive_ long enough for a rescue ...provided one was even coming.

" _What the hell are you doing?_ " Tess demanded, her ghost-memory popping up out of nowhere with no warning -- damn his brain sometimes -- perpetually bleeding from her own gut wound and cranky as hell as per usual, and this was really not a good time for it.

"We need to stop," Lex told Summers.

"Just a little further," Summers said, more or less ignoring him.

"He needs medical attention," Lex said through clenched teeth, continuing to drag him along, an unwilling participant in this aggravating farce.

"You can leave anytime," Summers told him.

"What?" said Lex, coming to a halt.

"You son of a bitch--!" Tess began.

Summers stopped, glanced over at him, and brought his gun up again. "I don't need you," he told Lex, to Lex's utter shock. "And I don't need him in really great shape; just breathing." And then Summers got a mad gleam in his eye. "So, you can either help me move him, and I'll let you get him some 'medical attention' before he dies after I'm through with him," Summers said reasonably, then leveled the barrel at him. "Or, I can drop you where you stand, and both of you can die. Your choice."

"You son of a bitch," Tess muttered.

Lex moved forward slowly.

He leaned over and got a good hold under Kent's armpit again, slick though his hands were, and wet.

He tried not to think too much about how much of Kent's blood was on him, as they continued dragging him along.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"You're going to hell for this," Tess informed him caustically, as she paced forward and back along the hallway beside them, circling, weighed down by nothing. "If he doesn't kill you, believe me -- I will."

Lex couldn't really disagree with the sentiment.

Summers kicked open a door, and Lex glanced around with a frown. They were in the main machine room for the floor -- no, the entire building -- and Summers was tugging at Kent's dead weight (oh god) like he wanted to move him to the far wall.

"What are you doing?" Lex said, trying to stall, though he wasn't sure what, exactly, he was stalling. Going by Summer's attitude of accomplishment, they were where he wanted to be, which mean they were where Lex did _not_ , by process of elimination. "You said you wanted him alive," Lex told him as they got him up by -- yes, he'd been right -- the far wall. "He's barely breathing," damn it --but Summers was ignoring him. He took a breath, and a step forward.

"Back off," Summers said, coming around immediately and waving the gun at him, and Lex backed away two steps with a grimace.

"What could you _possibly_ hope to accomplish by this?" Lex asked, pushing a little harder. "This isn't a good place to hold off an attack," Lex continued, with his hands up, eyeing the gun. "The doors open too wide, there's too much cover near the one exit, and we're at a dead end. You're trapped."

"Not for long," Summers said, eyeing the junction box in front of him.

"Wait," Tess said, suddenly. "Wait, what is... he..."

Lex glanced sideways at her, and she looked... unsure.

And then Tess' eyes went wide.

"That's Eric Summers!" she yelled, looking panicked. " _What the hell were you thinking!?!_ "

"Stay where you are!" Lex heard yelled from behind him, and he spun in place to see Green Arrow standing in the doorway, bow coming up, cocked.

"Heh," said Summers. "Hold him off!" he said loudly-- and tossed Lex the gun.

"Wh--??" Lex said, as he reflexively caught the gun thrown at his chest... badly.

He clutched at it two-handed, fumbling it, then stared down at it blankly as Queen bellowed "LUTHOR!!!" at him from the side.

_Oh, you son of a bitch,_ Lex thought as he dove to the side to miss three arrows shot off in more than due haste, and had to fire back just to get Queen the hell off of him.

Queen dove away himself, and Lex swung the gun up and around to Summers and pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession.

Click click click.

_Goddamit!!!_

\--And Summers, behind the shelving a bit, protected from Queen's crossfire -- _had that been intentional? the bastard_ \-- had gotten the electrical junction box open, and it was spitting sparks. Lex watched in confusion as Summers grabbed Kent at the shoulder and waist -- right at the goddamn wound, of all places -- and hoisted him up.

Lex's eyes widened, because Summers-- he wasn't _actually_ going to-- he couldn't be--!

"STOP HIM!" Tess screamed at him as Lex threw the gun away and launched himself forward.

Lex grabbed at Summers' hands, trying to yank backwards, but Kent was too heavy and they both fell forward and--

Lex wasn't strong enough.

He felt more than heard the explosion.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex felt... odd.

He knew he should be hurting more, but everything just _ached_.

He had a ringing in his ears that slowly resolved into derisive laughter and shouts.

He was face down on the floor, and halfway across the room from the blowback. He levered himself up slowly, ever so slightly, not wanting to draw any attention, and looked up to see Oliver firing shot after shot at Summers, and Summers was ducking and dodging just barely enough to be getting himself enough out of the way, like it was nothing, like he didn't even care if he got hit.

There was smoke everywhere.

Lex swallowed and glanced off to his side. Clark was on the floor by the melted mess of the junction box.

Lex crawled his way over, ignoring the fighting, keeping his head down.

He felt sick.

Clark was a mess.

\--Not a _charred_ mess, thank whatever deities were 'up there' that maybe didn't hate his guts quite so much, but a bloody one.

Weirdly, his color was better. He was only pale as a ghost -- well, not Tess; pale as an _imaginary_ ghost, maybe -- not as sickly-grey as before, and suddenly Lex wondered if that was better or worse, because it was probably better, but...

He got himself up against the wall, then pulled Clark towards him, up against his chest, searching for the wound at his back.

He felt a wave of nausea and pulled back his hands, giving up the idea of trying to get the bullet out of Kent right then and there. He wasn't sure if it was the blood, the smell, the proximity, or something else, but... he just couldn't do it. Every time he got close to attempting to do so, he felt like he'd collapse if he tried... or keel over retching. --Well, it was firmly stuck inside Kent, anyway; he'd probably do more damage trying to remove it here, under these conditions, than if it stayed in a little while longer.

Fine. A hospital, it was.

He got Clark in his arms, his feet under him, and lifted.

...Huh. Adrenaline was really good stuff.

Lex glanced around, then noticed a break in the fighting fray.

He ran through the gap like his life depended on it.

He was out the door, down the hallway, and barely had time to wonder why not a single soul of the League he passed tried to reach out a hand and accost him. They all seemed frozen in place.

Shock at seeing one of their own in such a state, perhaps?

The rest of his pellmell run passed in a blur under the dark cloudy nighttime sky.

He was standing in the middle of Metropolis General without any really clear recollection of the time that had passed in-between.

"I need a gurney!" he shouted, shaking with reaction.

Nobody moved.

Lex squeezed his eyes shut and controlled his breathing, because completely losing it wouldn't help any, and the faint buzzing hum that had been ringing in his ears was suddenly overwhelmed by a cacophony of life, as the rest of the world seeped back in.

"This man has been shot!" he belted out in the most commanding tones he could voice, snapping his eyes back open. "Get me a doctor!"

The nurse in front of him across the counter stared at him in shock for a moment, and then there was motion and sound and--

Kent. Fuck. Lex stared after him as they wheeled him down the hallway at a full-out run.

...Had he even been breathing when he'd put him down?

How long had it taken him to get Kent here?

Sound swirled around him in a buzz, a roar, and Lex just wanted to collapse, right then and there.

Somehow, he couldn't quite manage it.

~*~*~*~*~*~

He was dying.

Clark knew this; he'd been close to death before. And dying.

What he wasn't sure of was what was going on.

He didn't know what was going on. He wasn't in the Field yet, and he couldn't remember what had happened, not through the haze of pain.

He heard beeping noises and made a great effort. He was barely able to crack open his eyes.

...Someone was coming at him with a knife.

He couldn't see anyone's faces.

He was hurting.

...That was a _surgical_ knife.

Panic.

He _fought._

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Shit!!" the surgeon cursed, backing off as the man in the operating table suddenly kicked out.

"Oh my god!" One of the nurses exclaimed and pinwheeled away. Another screamed and dropped a tray.

"Damnit, _get him under!_ " the surgeon yelled at the anethesiologist.

"I thought he was!" the man yelped, struggling to get the mask back over the struggling patient's nose and mouth.

The surgeon slapped the knife back down on the wheeled surgical tray, shoved it out of the way, and nodded grimly to the male nurses at the periphery.

The lot of them half-tackled the man on the operating table, and if anything the man's struggles became more pronounced.

"Damnit, Clyde," the surgeon growled under his breath at the white and slightly shaking anethesiologist, who had started to pull the NOX mix away, then was back to clutching the mask to the man's face again. "What the _hell_ are you doing? That's enough."

But the man shook his head. "It's... --the drug isn't working," he said.

"What?" the surgeon said, looking at the man like he was nuts and straightening up, reflexively letting go--

"No!" Clyde threw out there. "Fuck, John-- sir, get him strapped down! You won't be able to operate unless you hold him down!"

"Are you out of your damn--"

"The mix _isn't working_ ," the anethesiologist insisted. "He's only staying down because he's half suffocated, and I'm not letting him get enough oxygen," he said, and the surgeon nearly protested, until he realized that his patient had spasmed strongly again just as Clyde had started to pull the mask away, and he'd gotten in another breath. "Get him over on his stomach, strap him down," Clyde continued, "I don't think we've got enough time to keep trying mixes on him with his blood loss." And the horrible thing was, he was probably right. They'd had a bad accident ealier that night, and they were down to the last dregs of their type-O. Stores didn't want to release it if they didn't have to -- not without practically an act of God written in His own blood, anyway -- and because they'd found no ID on him and didn't know _what_ specific type he needed, they were waiting on the man's bloodwork from the lab, what little they'd sent having been collected from what they'd literally scooped out of him that had been pooling in his gut cavity and dripping out.

"Fuck," the surgeon cursed, then gestured. They got him turned over, and strapped down, despite the man fighting them like his life depended on it -- ironic, considering.

And then the surgeon grimly got to work on the bullet wound in the man's back, with two of the burliest men on the staff damn near sitting on his patient right by the wound site, because if they hadn't, he'd have bucked and twisted enough that the surgeon would've done more damage trying to help him than the man was causing himself...

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex wasn't sure how long he'd been standing there, staring at the double-doors, in the hallway to the emergency room, nor was he sure exactly when the petite nurse had started trying to get his attention. But when she finally registered to his consciousness, she had one of those looks of infinite patience gracing her entire being, which probably meant that she'd been at it for quite some time.

He let her gently tug him off to the showers -- the hospital's staff showers? -- to clean up.

There were clean towels, soap, and a lot of hot water.

It didn't feel warm.

Lex started shaking as the water trailed down his face and the steam curled up around him.

...His clothes were a wreck. He started stripping them off. Shirt first. Pants were unsalvageable.

Blood everywhere.

He couldn't remember how to undo his belt.

He couldn't remember...

"Well, I bet you're happy now," Tess told him by his shoulder.

"Go away," Lex told her numbly.

"Finally killed him first--"

"Never wanted that," Lex murmured.

"--'before he killed you in your sleep' like you were oh so worried about," she sneered at him.

"Never said that," he said just as quietly, leaning against the wall of the shower stall, not any warmer than the water.

Not any colder, either.

He closed his eyes.

The world tilted sideways for a moment, then didn't. Gravity turned off, then back on again.

"You embedded a radioactive isotope in his skin!" Tess said.

"I just wanted to know where he was," Lex said, his tongue feeling heavy, then light. "I just wanted to know..."

"You were _afraid_ ," Tess accused.

"Yes," Lex said, blinking his eyes open to stare at the tile wall in front of him, not looking at her.

"You were afraid of him," she pressed.

"No," Lex protested quietly, closing his eyes again.

" _Liar_ ," Tess said with venom.

Lex was too tired to protest **that**. He wasn't even sure she was wrong, because he _was_ afraid of _something_ , even if he still wasn't sure exactly what.

A man with godlike powers who could move _planets_ in their orbit.

Lex had looked up and seen...

It had been his first memory.

Seared into his consciousness, he was loathe to give it up.

...He was coming apart at the seams. All of them. _Literally_. They **burned**.

Lex bit back a whimper and slowly slid down the wall, farther under the pounding spray that might as well have not even been there.

"You--" Tess said, but her voice faded out to nothing.

There was a silence, and a roar in the silence.

Lex blanked out.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex slowly came to, and god help him, because no-one else would, he did _not_ feel all right.

He was jittery, and his head ached, and his fingers were twitching, and he just wanted... he wasn't sure what he wanted.

He stripped the rest of his ruined clothes off and finished his shower. He turned the water off with a shriek of metal-on-metal from the piping.

He was toweling off when he heard footsteps approach.

He wrapped a towel around his waist and stepped out of the stall.

The young nurse from the admissions desk was standing there, wide-eyed, holding a small packet of clothing out to him.

Sweats and jeans, mostly. Thick cotton socks and running shoes. Not that Lex cared.

He took it from her, and vaguely realized that she was looking at him almost reverentially.

...Um.

"Where did you come from?" she asked.

"The LexCorp party on Fifth and Main," he told her.

She stared at him a little blankly, then started with surprise and shock.

He slowly stepped backwards, back into the shower stall, and closed the curtain between them, feeling... odd.

He dressed in not-quite-a-rush. Briskly.

When he stepped back out, he almost felt... human?

"Where is Kent?" he asked the girl.

"Who?"

Lex frowned. "Kent. Clark Kent," he repeated when he received no further recognition at all. "The man I brought here, to the emergency room," he said slowly, before realizing that he'd never identified the man earlier.

"Oh," the girl-woman said. "I can take you to him."

Lex nodded once, and asked with some trepidation, "How is he?"

There was a nervous pause, then...

"He's out of surgery," she said.

Lex tried to ignore the sinking feeling he was getting. Instead, he focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Carefully. The shoelaces had been a bit hard -- he'd never had any to tie before.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex's sinking feeling was confirmed when he entered the room -- the young nurse stayed behind at the doorway, then vanished on him when he wasn't looking.

Not that that was a hard feat, because he'd only had eyes for Kent until he'd caught sight of the restraints and had turned to question her thoroughly on their necessity.

Her absence was not appreciated, but there wasn't much he could do about it at the moment. So, he settled on frowning again and made his way over to Kent's bedside.

Kent was stirring weakly and had a mask over his face -- oxygen? -- but he didn't seem to need it, and it looked like it was causing him no small distress, so Lex removed it.

He saw something like consciousness slowly seep back into Kent's gaze, and then Clark was looking up at him blankly.

Lex could name the exact second when Clark recognized him, because he went still and almost seemed to relax.

And then he seemed to become aware of his surroundings.

And in the next second, his eyes were shot through to overflowing with sheer animal terror as he bucked and fought and railed against the bonds holding him down, _screaming incoherently_.

Lex backwheeled abruptly, eyes widening.

_\--What? But--_

And then Lex was being jostled aside as two burly male nurses were in and holding Kent down, trying to get the mask back on him.

"Idiot!" one of them yelled at him. "What the hell were you thinking, taking him off the sedative mix?"

"What?" Lex said, then, "Why is he tied down?"

"Why the hell do you think?" the man growled back at him in irritation, nodding his head towards the shrieking, flailing Kent on the bed. "He's been like this since he was brought in, even in surgery."

"In--" Lex must have misunderstood. "Kent was _awake_ during surgery?"

He stared down at Kent as he struggled and struggled, and he thought about what that might mean, that he'd refused any anesthetic--

...but then why were they--?

The burly nurse was staring at him.

"You know who this man is?" Lex was asked urgently, "Do you know his blood type?" and the implications of that were...

Lex went pale.

He shoved the man aside roughly, hard enough to slam him up against the nearby bed, and started ripping the restraints off of Clark, ignoring the other male nurse's protests -- which stopped when he gave the man a patented Luthorian _glare_ that had the man stepping away, pale as a sheet.

Almost as pale as Clark was, and soon enough Lex had Clark free of all but his IV line and the cardiac monitors.

...And then he had to grab Clark and hold him down by the arms as he tried desperately to get up off of the bed.

"L-let me go!" Clark said in a strangled tone, shot through with pain.

"Do you know where you are?" Lex demanded evenly.

"No, no, let me go!" Clark said, and it sounded more like a hopeless plea this time.

"You're in a hospital," Lex told him. "You were shot. You needed surgery to remove the bullet." He ignored the nurses moving around him-- them. "You're fine now, but you need to stop fighting everything all the damn time, or you'll pull out the stitches and the IV line."

Clark was staring up at him, panting, eyes wide and shocky.

"Do you understand?" Lex asked him intensely, looking him in the eye.

Clark made no conscious motion -- nothing that could be regarded as recognition.

So Lex repeated it again.

"You're in a hospital," he started again, in even tones. "You were shot--"

Lex maintained eye contact and kept talking. Clark showed no sign of understanding him.

Clark kept staring up at him, and he was shivering. He wasn't fighting anymore.

Lex still didn't let go of his wrists.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Oddly, Lex didn't go hoarse, though he knew he must have been talking awhile.

He lost track of how many times he'd told Clark, until...

"I'm in a hospital," Clark interrupted.

"Yes," Lex said.

There was a pause.

"You told him to shoot me."

Lex suppressed a wince.

To say _I didn't think you would get shot_ would be a lie. Instead, he said, "I didn't think you would get hurt."

Clark swallowed. Hard.

Something occurred to Lex.

"If I let go, will you stay put?" he asked.

Clark stared up at him.

"I don't want you pulling your stitches out while I'm trying to get you a glass of water," Lex elaborated. "Will you stay put?"

Clark nodded slowly.

Lex took him at his word, and slowly let go.

Clark stayed put.

Lex watched him like a hawk as he reached over and poured him a cup of water from the pitcher at the bedside table.

He carefully helped Clark sit up and take a sip of water, then two.

Clark didn't look much better as he finally sat back, and they eyed each other.

"You shouldn't have gotten hurt," Lex said.

"You told him to shoot me," Clark repeated.

"That wasn't--" Lex felt a rising frustration. "It shouldn't have mattered," Lex insisted. "I know."

Clark frowned at him.

"Don't give me that," Lex demanded under his breath, sitting down on the side of the bed. "I know that you know I know, ever since the damn helicopters," he said straight-out. "And I know that you didn't tell Queen and his League about my knowing. You might as well admit it," he added, "because this 'game' of yours is getting old."

" _My_ game?" Clark said in soft tones of muted anger.

"I gave you a chance to 'fess up," Lex said. "You chose to run." He'd figured out an 'antidote' to scrub the radiation out of Kent's system almost two months ago, shortly after Kent had been exposed. He wasn't stupid, and he didn't like the implications of enforced solitude that Kent had been imposing on himself for no discernable reason.

"You hurt those people to get to me," Kent said quietly, angrily. "You drove me away from my friends and family, you manipulated Summers into shooting me; you had those _people_ **cut into** me -- and for what?" Clark demanded, his breath gone ragged. "Why are you doing this?"

Lex gritted his teeth. "The shuttle launch was sabotaged."

"You--"

"I was planning on tagging you in orbit and calling it an accidental misfiring, _you idiot_ ," Lex hissed out under his breath, watching Clark's eyes go wide. "I wasn't about to sacrifice my own people aganst you when there was no need to do so. --And I _wasn't_ working with Summers," he protested angrily. "I don't run around trying to think up vast, intricate, B-movie plots that **might** _maybe_ work out the way I planned out of sheer luck and providence. I don't just count on someone _maybe_ being somewhere and _maybe_ doing what I _think_ they _might_ do in order to get what I want." He glared down at Clark. "I imagine that we must not have gotten along before, for whatever reason, but until such time as I know what happened that we disagreed so strongly on that we parted acquaintance in Smallville," Lex informed him, "I am not about to attempt vengeance for some unknown slight that I can't even remember, especially when I have no idea who did what to whom," he ended, sitting back, folding his arms across his chest, and glaring daggers at Kent.

Clark blinked at him, then blinked at him again.

"And before you accuse me of preventing you from getting a blood transfusion," Lex put out there, poking a finger at his chest, not being one to let things go longer than necessary, "I did not, in fact, diabolically engineer whatever massive bus crash occurred earlier this evening that managed to wipe out the hospital's blood supply at right about the time you were admitted." Lex took a breath. "Though I do believe that this hopsital has been in touch with some of the smaller-area ones, and will be having additional supplies flown in--"

"No transfusions!" Clark interrupted abruptly. Lex blinked at him. "I-- I mean, I don't need one," Clark stammered out, looking a little scared all over again.

_Like hell you don't,_ thought Lex, but he clamped down on the natural response.

Instead, he gave Clark a jerky, incline of the head, a sort of nod.

Clark didn't really relax.

Lex blew out a breath. "I should get back," he said, shoving himself upright and catching the metal bracing rail of the hospital bed, which creaked under his weight as he shifted posture. "I doubt the LexCorp party ended well -- not after _that_ interruption," he sighed, feeling another headache coming on. "I ought to see what the League damage amounted to, this time, and try to resolve things with the invited guests."

He let go of the rail and started to step back, when Clark, wide-eyed, shot out an arm and grabbed him by the wrist.

Lex froze.

"Don't go," Clark said.

Lex stared at him.

"Don't go," Clark repeated, and while Lex hadn't been sure about the former tone, this time it was slow, inexorable, and urgent.

Lex ended up staying.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex grumbled and shifted on the side of the hospital bed next to Clark.

"Oliver," Clark warned, trying to wave Green Arrow away. He didn't really want him waking Lex up. He looked like he could use the sleep.

...Actually, he'd probably be just fine, too, if he could get a little more sleep, himself.

But Oliver didn't look like he was in any sort of mood to take 'no' for a response.

" _ **Luthor**_ ," he commanded, raising his bow.

"Mmmrgh," Lex grumbled more audibly, and blinked his eyes open.

God, it was bad enough that Eric had stolen his powers, but Lex... and this whole thing...

"Queen," Lex said evenly, levering himself upright and rubbing at his forehead, grimacing. He was on the side of the bed farthest from the door, and therefore farthest from Oliver, luckily.

Clark would take whatever luck he could get at the moment, even if it was a small one.

"I'm taking you in," Oliver said.

"No, Oliver," Clark said urgently.

"I don't know how the hell you got past us--" Oliver continued, pulling the arrow back.

"Oliver, for god's sake!" Clark said.

"--or how you managed to get your boy Summers past the party security--"

"Will you just listen to me!?" Clark tried, with a desperate anger, because this was _not_ a great time to be getting ignored!

"--but you _will_ pay for what you've--"

"Oh, go to hell," Lex said.

"No, wait!" Clark yelled hoarsely, trying to shove Lex out of the way, but the shot was too close, and it was too late.

The arrow hit Lex full in the chest, hard.

And then it slowly fell and hit the cotton sheets with a soft 'whump'.

Oliver stared.

Lex looked down at the wicked-looking arrow with the metal-tipped hunting arrowhead, lying innocuously on the bedsheet in front of him.

Then Lex reached up a hand and poked at the hole in his shirt, and fingered his way through it to brush against the unmarked flesh underneath.

"Huh," Lex said.

Clark groaned softly and covered his face with his hands.

Could this get any worse?

"Is this something like how Eric ended up with your powers for about a week?" Lex asked, cocking his head as he thought aloud to himself. "Because that would explain the bruising. ...And gunshot-holes and bleeding," he put out there. "Though you seem to do enough of that when Kryptonite is involved."

There was dead silence. Except for the electronic beeping sounds of the hospital equipment.

And then Lex seemed to shake himself and blink once, twice, and then slowly looked over at Clark.

Oh, god. It got worse.

~*~*~*~*~*~


End file.
